1546 Johann Honter map of the World, after Waldseemüller

Dominant model of the world map before Ortelius.

This is an attractive edition of Johann Honter's 1546 map of the world, which made available to a broad audience the groundbreaking cartography of Martin Waldseemüller. The precursors to this map being rarities priced orders of magnitude higher, Honter's map is one of the earliest acquirable maps to show this stage of cartography, and to show the place name 'America'.

A Closer Look

Honter's map is a reduced-format version of the 1507 Waldseemüller and the 1520 Apianus maps, laid out on a cordiform, or heart-shaped, projection, stretching from a narrow, embryonic America in the west to a simplified Japan in the east. While this mapping vastly underestimates the size of the Pacific, it is important for its unambiguous separation of the landmasses of North America and Asia (a notion not proved correct until the last voyage of James Cook near the end of the 18th century). In addition to having been reduced in size, Honter's map strips away the decorative elements of the Apianus, allowing the map to fit neatly and legibly in smaller-format books. Although the scale of the map disallowed fine detail for Europe, the presentation of northern Africa and Asia is recognizably drawn ultimately from Ptolemy. This is most broadly evident in the depiction of a shallow Indian Peninsula, a massive island of Taprobana, and the knobby shape of the Malay Peninsula. A prominent 'Dragon's Tail,' such as appeared on the 1490 Martellus map, shows the truncated land bridge thought by Ptolemy to have connected Africa with China - thus further revealing the debt owed to Ptolemy, while acknowledging the more recent discoveries by the Portuguese that it was possible to sail around Africa to reach the Indies from Europe.

Honter and Apianus both copied Waldseemüller's treatment of America by clearly separating the North and South American landmasses with an imaginary strait partway between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer.

Naming the New World

Waldseemüller's 1507 wall map of the world was the first to depict North and South America as distinct from Asia clearly and the first to apply the place name 'America' to the New World. Waldseemüller was reluctant to do so, but his publishing partner, Matthias Ringmann, was a champion of Vespucci's naming the New World. As a result, the new map and the accompanying pamphlet in 1507 apply the name 'America' to the newly discovered continent. Waldseemüller did not repeat the act: his 1513 maps do not include the name 'America'. In spite of this change, the influence of the 1507 world map was far-reaching - first through Apianus' 1520 reduction of the map and then by the broad dissemination of this Honter reduction.

Publication History and Census

This map was cut (and signed) in 1546 by formschneider Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder for inclusion in Honter's Rudimenta Cosmographica, published in Zurich in the shop of Christoph Froschauer. The map appeared not only in the many editions of that work, but also in other Froschauer-published works such as Joachim Vadianus' 1546 and 1548 Epitome, and Johann Stumph's Schwytzer Chronika for its 1548, 1586 and 1606 editions. The present example conforms typographically to the 1586 edition of Stumpf. Despite a long and prolific print history, we see only 5 separate examples of this map in institutional collections.

Examples of this map appearing in Honter's Rudimenta typically exhibit damage at the centerfold, owing to the way in which the map was bound into the work. In Stumpf's Schwytzer Chronika, the map appeared on a sheet of text with no folds or stitching, and is generally to be found in much better condition than comparable Rudimenta examples.

Cartographers

Johannes Honter (1498-1549) was a Transylvanian cartographer, born in Kronstadt (now Brasov, Romania.) Nothing is known of his youth, but he was sufficiently educated to enroll in the university of Vienna in 1515, and receive his bachelor's degree in 1517 and his master's in 1525. The university was rich in humanists and cosmographers; he was a classmate of Peter Apian. It is just as well he was there: in the 1520s Transylvania under assault by the Turkish Army, and the Hungarian army was knocked back on its heels. He eventually had to flee Vienna in the face of the 1529 Turkish siege of the city. The next year would find him at the University of Krakow; while there he published a grammar and his cosmography, Ioannis Honter Coronensis Rudimentorum cosmographiae... In 1531 he traveled to Basel, to work as a proofreader. While there, he met Simon Grynaeus and publisher Heinrich Petri, as well as Sebastian Münster. He appears to have worked as a formschneider in Basel as well. His first full size map was his 1532 Chorographia Transylvaniae, Sybembürgen, the first printed map of that region. But he was unsatisfied with the work and prevented it from being broadly distributed. Only a single copy of the map survives, although a copy appears to have reached at least Joahannes Sambucus, whose Transylvania map copied Honter's. It also constituted the basis for Sebastian Münster's map of the place. Ortelius' maps of Transylvania, though credited to Sambucus, can be recognized as containing Honter's cartography. He would return to Kronstadt in 1533, where he would become involved in public affairs, and would work to establish Lutheranism in his homeland. To this end he started a school and a printing press. He did not neglect cosmography: he published a verse cosmography in 1542 which contained thirteen woodcut maps, which he executed himself.   Further Details...

Johann Stumpf (April 23, 1500 - 1578) was a German-Swiss historian, theologian and cartographer. was an early writer on the history and topography of Switzerland as well as a theologian and cartographer. He was born at Bruchsal in Germany, and was educated there, at Strasbourg and in Heidelberg. In 1520 he became a Catholic chaplain with the Knights Hospitaller. In 1521 the order sent him south to Freiburg im Breisgau, and on to Basel, where he would be ordained. In 1522 he was placed in charge of a preceptory in the canton of Zürich. In the years following Stumpf became an active Protestant theologian: he took part in the Bern Disputation and participated in the first Kappel War. His first marriage in 1529 would be to the daughter of Swiss historian Heinrich Brennwald, whose manuscript history inspired his son-in-law to take up that discipline. Stumpf's research was not only textual: he traveled in order to support his work. His opus - Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten, Landen und Voelckeren Chronick wirdiger thaaten Beschreybung - was published in 1548, and contained an array of beautiful woodcut maps. An extract of it would be republished in 1554 entitled Schwytzer Chronika. Enlarged editions of the original work were issued in 1586 and 1606. In addition to his historical work, he would continue as a Protestant pastor until 1561. He retired to Zurich in 1561, where his life would end in 1576.   Further Details...

Heinrich Vogtherr the Elder (1490 - 1556) was a German formschneider artist, printer, and author. He was born in the Bavarian town of Dollingen, the son of a doctor and brother of a priest and of a Bishop. He is thought to have received artistic training in Augsburg and likely studied wood engraving under Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531). At some point during his travels, he embraced the Lutheran reforms, which informed his own work and that which he would undertake for other authors; much of his early output would be Reformation broadsheets and pamphlets. Although he took part in the religious wars of the 1520s, he would eventually find his way with his family to safety in Strasbourg, where he would find most of his work producing illustrations for the active publishing community there. He would, in 1536, found his own print shop, but work would require him to move frequently: in 1538 to Basel, Speyer, and Augsburg. He would settle for some years in Zurich, working in the print shop of Christoph Froschauer. It was during his tenure there that he would produce Johann Honter's world map and many of the woodcut illustrations for Johannes Stumph's history of Switzerland. In 1550, he would move to Vienna at the command of Emperor Ferdinand I; he died in that city in 1556. Heinrich's son, Heinrich Vogtherr the Younger (1513 - 1568), would become a painter.   Further Details...

Source

Stumpf, J., Gemeiner löblicher Eydgnoschaft stetten, Lannden und Völckern chronicwirdiger Thaaten beschreybung, (Zurich: Froschauer) 1586.    

Condition

Excellent. Some faint staining in text area away from map. Else fine. Size given for sheet with text: map alone measures 4.75 x 6.25 inches.

References

OCLC 164910264 (1546). Shirley, Rodney W., The Mapping of the World:  Early Printed World Maps 1472-1700, #86.